Cynthia McKinney

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I say we need to increase the minimum wage to a livable wage. We need to protect workers' rights and jobs. We need to decrease taxes on middle and low income families, and we need to encourage not just personal responsibility but corporate responsibility, too.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday I sent this letter to Speaker Gingrich urging him to hold a vote on a clean minimum wage increase. And today we learn that we will not even have the opportunity to vote on a dirty minimum wage increase. I have my daughter here for the day, Shanterri Grier, and she is here at the Capitol with me. Every one of the Republican leaders has said that she does not deserve the right to earn a decent wage. Shame, shame, shame. This Congress is earning its reputation. Conservative political analyst Kevin Phillips said the 104th Congress may be the worst in 50 years, and they are proving it today. Mr. Speaker, the letter referred to earlier is included for the Record. Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, April 23, 1996. Hon. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Speaker Gingrich: As a member of the Georgia Congressional Delegation I feel compelled to write you about the fast-eroding minimum wage and its impact on the working people of our State. I respectfully request that you permit the House of Representatives to vote on increasing the minimum wage, without attaching highly controversial riders that would only sabotage the proposed 90 cent increase. It is my understanding, from numerous press reports, that you may schedule a vote to increase the minimum wage. However, I am dismayed to learn that you intend to attach numerous other provisions which would weaken worker protections and increase the deficit. I fail to see the purpose of undermining occupational safety and health standards and/or including tax cuts without offsets, when it is the tragically low minimum wage that needs to be addressed. The false link you are creating between a minimum wage increase and a reduction in worker protections, is little more than a cynical ploy to convince people earning $8,400 a year that less safe working conditions are the price they must pay for a living wage. This Machiavellian approach is insensitive to the needs of thousands of working Georgians who struggle just to put food on the table. As of 1994, 11.9% of Georgia's workforce was earning between $4.25 and $5.14 an hour. A 90 cent increase would help these nearly 362,000 people make ends meet. I have heard arguments from Republican leaders that raising the minimum wage would reduce jobs. However, numerous studies have shown little to no job loss when the minimum wage was raised--in some cases the number of jobs have increased. Moreover, an eminent group of 101 economists, including three Nobel Prize laureates, recently endorsed an increase in the federal minimum wage. On behalf of working Georgians earning the minimum wage, I urge you to bring a clean minimum wage increase up for a vote on the floor of the House before the Memorial Day district work period. Sincerely, Cynthia McKinney, Member of Congress

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I sent this letter to my colleague from Georgia, Speaker Gingrich, urging him to hold a vote on a clean minimum wage increase before the Memorial Day district work period. And today, Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate on the floor of the House what I stated to Speaker Gingrich in this letter. In the letter I said: The false link you are creating between a minimum wage increase and a reduction in worker protections, is little more than a cynical ploy to convince people earning $8,400 a year that less safe working conditions are the price they must pay for a living wage. This Machiavellian approach is insensitive to the needs of thousands of working Georgians who struggle just to put food on the table. As of 1994, 11.9% of Georgia's workforce was earning between $4.25 and $5.14 an hour. A 90-cent increase would help these nearly 362,000 people make ends meet. Once again, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleague from the Sixth District of Georgia to permit a vote on a clean minimum wage increase.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, we are also told that some of the slaves actually asked for and fought for a continuation of slavery. That did not make slavery right. America needs a raise. Now, I came down here to talk about the Republican agenda with respect to the environment. I am not surprised that for his Earth Day stunt Speaker Gingrich took young children to the zoo. If Speaker Gingrich has his way on the Endangered Species Act, about the only place we will be able to find endangered species, or even nonendangered species, will be in the zoo. Mr. Speaker, constituents have a particular problem, my constituents have a particular problem, with the health effects from chronic exposure to arsenic. In fact, I have constituents who now suffer from arsenical keratosis because of their exposure to arsenic. Yet, if the Republicans have their way, not only the communities of Hyde Park and Virginia subdivisions will be reeling from the effects of chronic exposure to arsenic, we all may be, because their version of the Safe Drinking Water Act means dirtier tap water in Georgia. They voted against an amendment that would have prohibited the introduction of arsenic into the water supply. It is almost unbelievable, but it is true. With respect to the Safe Drinking Water Act, that would result in dirtier tap water from my State of Georgia. The Republicans' draft legislation of the Safe Drinking Water Act would weaken the laws' basic health standard, delay health standards for highly hazardous contaminants, and reduce the public's right to know about health threats from contaminated drinking water. In 1993 and 1994, over 150,000 Georgians drank tap water that failed to meet the EPA's basic health standards for bacterial toxic chemicals, fecal matter and other dangerous microbes. The House of Representatives would have cut $15 million to help cities and towns upgrade drinking water plants. With respect to the Clean Water Act, lakes, rivers and beaches in Georgia would have been fouled. If the Clean Water Act became law, it would have allowed untreated sewage to be discharged into coastal waters. It would have made the cleanup of toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes voluntary, it would have redefined most of the Nation's wetlands out of existence, and, of course, it would have gutted the EPA's efforts to control farm runoff, the single largest source of unregulated water pollution today. In 1993 and 1994, over 140,000 Georgians drank tap water that was contaminated by fecal matter or other bacteria, in part because of sewage discharges into rivers and lakes at 31 locations throughout the State. In terms of wetlands, the Clean Water Act creates a new definition of wetlands protection for 73 million acres of wetlands, or 71 percent of the remaining wetlands in 48 States. This would leave these lands to be developed with no Federal oversight or restrictions whatsoever. Of the 5.3 million acres of wetlands in Georgia, an estimated 4.7 million acres, 90 percent of the total wetlands remaining in the State, would no longer be considered wetlands under the proposed bill. With respect to Superfund, the Republicans have introduced legislation that would bail out polluters and severely slow down cleanup of toxic dumps. The most recent draft of the bill released by House Republicans would abolish all liability for polluters who generated and transported waste prior to 1987. Even giant corporations would get off the hook for all toxic waste they sent off site prior to 1987. With respect to the toxics released inventory, their proposal would curtail reporting requirements for up to 90 percent of toxic chemical emissions that factories must report to the EPA. Mr. Speaker, I would just conclude by saying that Kevin Phillips said that this may be the worst Congress in 50 years. The Republicans are well on their way to proving that.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. If the gentleman and the gentlewoman would recall the arguments around NAFTA, do you remember that some people were saying that if we pass NAFTA and NAFTA becomes law, that American standards then would become global standards? So we did not have to fear about workers' wages going down, because workers' wages would go up. We did not have to fear about environmental standards going down because environmental standards were going up. I do not know that that has been the experience.

Ms. McKINNEY. That is correct.

Ms. McKINNEY. It is absolutely incredible. Two hundred and twelve times more in compensation than the average American worker.

Ms. McKINNEY. Well, I would begin by thanking the gentleman from New York for reserving this time so that we could talk about how America does need a raise, and our constituents, in particular, need to have a raise. I brought with me a cartoon from the Washington Post, Saturday, April 13. I want to read this cartoon. It says: ``The bad news, Johnson, is you are being let go. The good news is you can have your old job back at half your former pay.'' And then poor Johnson says: ``I can't live on that.'' And then his boss says: ``The rest of the good news is we can offer you a second job, also at half your former pay.'' The title of this cartoon is job growth. And now at the bottom it says: ``I'd offer you a third, but I'm afraid of overheating the economy.''

Ms. McKINNEY. I think this poignantly demonstrates the situation that America's workers are facing today, even those people who had white- collar jobs, who thought that they were secure. I have a constituent who was employed by IBM, who thought that that was a contract for life employment, and now, of course, finds himself among those others who have been downsized, dispossessed of their dignity, while corporate CEO's, of course, make salaries that even our athletes, our star athletes, begin to blush at. Last year the heads of about 30 major corporations made 212 times more in compensation than the average American worker. And as we saw in the newspaper yesterday with Mr. Allen, the chairman of AT&T, he said that he really was not prepared to talk about his salary. And we saw him on ``60 Minutes''; ``60 minutes'' did a thing, and he was not prepared to talk about his salary. But, of course, what about those 43,000 who were downsized. What do they face? The fate that they face is jobs at half the pay, sometimes. If they are lucky, it is at half the pay of what they were formerly making. I have another chart here. This is a quote from our right honorable majority leader. He says the minimum wage is a very destructive thing. I will resist a minimum wage increase with every fiber in my being. Now, I do not know about my sister and my brother, my sister from North Carolina, my brother from New York, but I cannot imagine leadership of the United States of America that would resist giving people who are working every day------

Ms. McKINNEY. A dollar. Because now we have some Republicans who have said, well, we are willing to support a dollar increase in the minimum wage. I would suggest just with my last little quote here from my charts----

Ms. McKINNEY. I will.

Ms. McKINNEY. But this is the same group of people who want welfare reform, and they want to kick people off of welfare and send them to work, but they want to send them to work at a job that does not even sustain a decent living.

Ms. McKINNEY. Kevin Phillips, a conservation political analyst, said the 104th Congress may be the worst in 50 years. Now, can you imagine that we are presiding over something that is going down in history, but going down in history the wrong way?

Ms. McKINNEY. That is true.

Ms. McKINNEY. Thank you very much for the correction. Perhaps this is one way that they can get on the right side of history, by doing something that is a moral obligation to working Americans so that they can at least go to work every day and then come home and not have to live in poverty.

Ms. McKINNEY. I certainly will.

Ms. McKINNEY. And in order for the minimum wage to have the same purchasing power as it did in the 1970's, it would need to be $6.07 an hour. So when you talk about purchasing power and inflation, it has eroded the minimum wage, the purchasing power of the minimum wage.

Ms. McKINNEY. To deny an increase in the minimum wage and also to cut the earned income tax credit is nothing other than mean, and that is not the kind of government that the American people deserve, and I know that is not what they voted for.

Ms. McKINNEY. That is certainly an inducement to those who would want to get off welfare but who find welfare more attractive because working every day pays less than welfare in some places. This is an inducement for those people who want to work to go to work and then to be able to live a decent life at the end of their work.

Ms. McKINNEY. That is correct. I would just like to say something about the notion of a social good. At some point we have got to start thinking about the community. We have got to think about the community that is America. I know we went through the 1980's, and the 1980's was the ``I-me'' decade. We are seeing the fruits of that now. The fruits of that, as you have correctly pointed out, is the fact that we have got concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer Americans. They are getting more and more and more of the pie. The rest of us are being left out. At some point when you have productivity increases, you would think that America as a whole, the community, would grow as a result of that productivity growth. But what we have seen is that we have got this ``winner take all,'' and the winner is the CEO and those folks who are in that orbit. They get everything, and can even get rewarded by laying people off, by putting people on the streets, by telling them ``We don't need you anymore.'' At some point we also have to think about the dignity of work and how people define themselves and their self-worth by what they do in life. If they have nothing to cling to because their commitment that they thought they had with their company, with their corporation, has been broken, not for the social good, not for America's good but for the good of individual people, one or two people get all of the results, all of the rewards, and they have to pay the price. At some point America and Americans have to wake up and say that it is one thing to be an individual who can soar to the top, but there is also some emptiness in being at the top if everyone else beneath you is way down at the bottom. We all can soar, and that is what is so good about this country, is that there is room for everybody, if the value is there that includes everybody.

Ms. McKINNEY. That is correct.

Ms. McKINNEY. I saw a newspaper article from I believe the Washington Post about a company called Greentree, and that CEO was being compensated at around $60 million. It is absolutely unbelievable.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, the 12 million Americans who earn the minimum wage aren't the only ones calling for an increase. In fact, 71 percent of Republican voters also support an increase in the minimum wage. Moreover, 15 House Republicans are calling for a $1 increase in the minimum wage over the next 2 years--that's 10 cents an hour more than what even the President is calling for. So, Mr. Speaker, why is it that the Republican leadership refuses to even allow a debate on the minimum wage? Well, it is because they don't even believe that there should be a minimum wage, period. In fact, the majority leader is on record as saying that he will oppose a minimum wage increase with every fiber of his being. That's strong language coming from someone who earns over $100,000 a year. Mr. Speaker, America deserves a raise and it is time that we gave it to them.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this resolution, and I would like to thank the Democratic leader and the Speaker for bringing this measure to the floor today. First, I wish to extend my condolences to the Brown family and to the families of all those who went down on that fateful flight. Their loss is our loss, and America mourns the passing of some of our best and brightest. Mr. Speaker, I personally admired Ron Brown as a role model and as a public servant. Moreover, his work touched the lives of my constituents who benefited from his vision of improving the lives of working families through investments and exports. Ron Brown exemplified everything we as Democrats believe in and stand for. His belief in the human spirit and the American dream permeated every aspect of his life. His unwavering compassion and concern for the less fortunate was the moral compass by which he guided his work. As Democrats, we have lost one of our party's finest. Mr. Speaker, it is not often that I get to meet the likes of a Ron Brown. Moreover, I am proud to have known him and appreciate what he has done for my constituents, for my party, and for my country. A young woman from Atlanta was also on that plane, Kathryn Hoffman. My condolences are extended to her family and to her friends. I was recently asked by a journalist about the loss of Ron Brown, a black leader. I corrected that journalist. Ron Brown was an American leader.

Ms. McKINNEY

Ms. McKINNEY. I did not necessarily want the gentlewoman to yield, but I was just thinking about the depth of your feeling and your compassion. It is a shame that we have leadership in this country, leadership that leads this country, that does not feel anything at all about leaving folks who are hard working, who go to work everyday, get up by the clock, punch out by the clock, and they want to leave them behind and leave the embrace of this Government away from them, yet they rush to those who already have.